Magenta - For a Reason or a Season?

I painted my house door magenta for a reason - I had absolutely no trend in mind. When the beach roses are in full bloom, there is simply no other choice. A recent Wall Street Journal article tells us that "magenta" is "suddenly haute" in everything from fashion to architecture for just this season in an article entitled: Hot Pink? Call it 'Mangenta.' They have it right when they explain: "The fuchsia phenomenon might not age really well. Yet that's precisely the point -- fuchsia is so very here today because tomorrow is so scary to think about. The color of hothouse flowers and glorious summer landscapes speaks to our bruised psyches. Brown is bleak. Fuchsia is anything but." I guess the concept of optimism would explain Bill Clinton's pink tie on the cover of the 5/31 New York Times Magazine, but it still does not explain all that pepto bismal pink coming out of the European design community on everything from furnishings to finishes.

The Truth about Luxury

For years now, marketers have thrown around the concept that "the middle is gone." I almost came to believe it, but was never really convinced. Certainly, the "illusion of luxury" kept winning the day, but things are different today. You could never call the Ralph Lauren paint line "luxury," but it wore the mantle of high fashion, and so the "mantle of luxury" strengthened the successful middle. (Yes, the middle was there all along.) When seeing this spring's fashion ads, I kept thinking that for the first time ever, the Ralph Lauren ads were tone deaf. The Wall Street Journal notes that the branded store sales of this bellwether luxury retailer have fallen 12.4% this year. The company's total numbers still look respectable due to international sales and a strong 5% increase in wholesale sales due to the (drum roll for that missing middle) American Living line for J.C. Penney which does not even carry the Ralph Lauren name.

The above image is one of my slides from a recent presentation at Coverings, the annual tile trade show. I mentioned that Hermes was offering to put their customers purchases in plain brown wrappers. (Luxury = porn??) In today's email, Knowledge@Wharton has an article titled: The New High-end Consumer: 'Please Put My Bottega Veneta Wallet in a Plain Bag.' The article mentions mark-downs of as high as 70%. I believe that would qualify as "the middle."

The American Affluence Research Center surveys wealthy Americans (Average annual income $290,000 and net worth of 3.1M) twice a year. They surmise that much of the hype of "luxury" was fed by the media- as most of the affluent have solidly middle class values. Luxury made for more interesting stories, and no doubt brought in the luxury advertisers. Their survey found that remodeling plans are less than 1/2 of what they were a year ago. The 17 categories surveyed established historic lows, and by a very substantial margin in most cases. For example, 10% of those surveyed plan to increase their spending on furniture and home furnishings, while 43% plan to reduce their spending, while the rest plan to spend the same as last year. The survey offers an outlook for the next 12 months.

Past Imperfect

I have been trying to understand my obsession with my LENSBABY, (a lens that distorts images leaving only a narrow window of focus.) After seeing the Blow Away vase introduced by Front Design at the Milan Furniture Fair, I am finally beginning to figure it out. Perfection without artistry is now easy to achieve with even the simplest Point and Shoot camera. The LENSBABY takes us back to pinhole camera days with almost no automatic controls. (Yes, you can control the exposure time, and you do get instant feedback with a digital camera- after all we are not Luddites.)

Front gave a traditional Royal Delft design a simulated gust of wind to create the Blow Away vase for Moooi. It looks like a vase that slumped in the kiln and the effect is similar to the out-of-focus range in LensBaby photographs. Perfection is now easy, creativity is the new capital. (According to Daniel Pink's "Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers will Rule the Future.") As artists and designers, we are all trying to play the Wizard, make a connection to the past and put heart into today's soulless and "perfect" technology.

This trend is taking hold quickly, HOW - the graphic arts magazine focused on "Hands-on guide to creativity" this month - literally taking its readers back to such imperfect and almost forgotten tools as screen printing, stencils and block printing to "jump-start" their creativity when their return to the computer.

Answer in on Abercrombie & Fitch

In a post on March 11, I wondered how Abercrombie & Fitch would fair given their approach to promotion of their brand. As consumers usually turn conservative in a downturn, would they continue to support them? The results are in and same store sales are down 22% for the first quarter of 2009, while a lower priced competitor, Aeropostale is up 20% in same store sales and up 31% overall. Is it time for Abercrombie to rethink their image?

Martin Lindstrom may be on to something in the research in his book Buyology which shows that sex used in advertising only sells sex rather than the product.

Affordable, Energy-efficient, Attractive? Modular Home

The press has, of late, been enamored with contemporary modular homes. As I mentioned in a previous post, they will become interesting when they become affordable. Clayton Homes recently introduced their affordable, energy efficient "i-home" (will Apple be suing? No, because "i" stands for "innovation, inspiration, intelligence and integration.") at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. (Available in two packages: $74,900 for the 723-square-foot and $93,300 for the 1,023-square-foot unit.) The interior is every bit as attractive as some of the expensive homes, but the outside still looks like temporary restrooms in an urban highway rest stop. (While the good looking one is under construction) We are in the 21st century, why the continued reliance on the cold and foreboding 50's modern idioms?

After affordability, I would include emotional livability as a requirement for the success of this concept. We may use rest stop restrooms and loved the original MickieD's as iconic, but we don't want to live in either one. (Even Walter Gropius's house is a museum, not a home.)

Politicians were fiddling

While hedge funds and banks were busy robbing us blind, politicians were busy with important things the world over - like banning various types of light bulbs. Congress did it and so did some commission in the EU. Ingo Mauer, the lighting designer offered his own form of creative protest at the Milan Furniture Fair. At least in Europe, they can still use an incandescent bulb, while it will shortly be banned in the US. Forget that lovely little "instant on" incandescent light bulb, in the future it will take almost as long to get light from a light fixture as it does to boot up your computer.

Italian design gone wrong

The sofa "Montanara" is designed by Gaetano Pesce for Meritalia Group. In this case being "on-trend" is not enough to make it good - it's just another tacky attention getting device. All that can be said for this travesty is that stains would not show. No wonder the American market prefers La-Z-boy recliners.